Right Now
by the.eye.does.not.SEE
Summary: A moment in the rubble after the bridge collapses. Rob/Beth.


**Title**: _Right Now _(1/1)

**Fandom**: _Cloverfield_

**Pairing**: Rob Hawkins/Beth McIntyre

**Rating**: PG-13

**Summary**: A moment in the rubble.

**Author's Note**: I know I haven't written for these two in ages. But please give it a read, if you have a chance, and let me know what you think. I've added in some background for those that haven't seen the movie.

. . .

"_Look at me! Beth, __**look at me**__—I love you."_

_"I love you."_

. . .

Beth's ears were ringing. It wasn't really until just now that she realized how often people misused that phrase, herself included. She'd thought she'd experienced it before—during fire drills in school, or, once, when she'd fainted and knocked her head—but now she knew she hadn't. Those instances were mere annoyances compared to what she was experiencing now. Her head might as well be one big brass bell, being knocked with a mallet again and again and again, for the pain she was feeling.

Every time she tried to breathe, she inhaled dust, and when she coughed to try to expel it, pain tore through her chest. Somehow it made the pain between her ears even worse; her head throbbed like someone was taking a jackhammer to it. If her body hadn't been pinned down in a hundred different places by what must be at least a couple tons of cement and brickwork, she would've curled up into a ball and wept at the pain. She would've cried for her mother, and for her father. But she didn't have enough breath for wracking sobs, and her limbs were not free to move, and she had no idea where her parents were—or if they were even still alive—so she just let the tears fall down her face as she gasped for oxygen and choked on the foul air around her, all the while trying to take stock of her situation.

She was stuck under a collapsed bridge, she knew, somewhere in Central Park. Check, that was true. She also knew that no one was coming to help her. Check again, unfortunately. She actually doubted anyone was still alive, after how that gigantic other-worldly creature had torn through the city, killed everyone in its path, and knocked down every building it came across like it was just brushing aside blades of grass. It had decimated the multiple police forces that had tried to gun it down, and had even withstood every bomb and tank the United States Army and Air Force had thrown at it. It seemed to be invincible and, from what she'd seen, it didn't look like it was going to stop until it had destroyed everything on the earth.

So there was no one left—check. No who could save her, and certainly no one who could kill it. But…there had been someone with her, before the collapse…

"Rob?" His name shot out of her mouth, so suddenly that it startled even her, and she jumped. She winced at the resulting pain, but she kept talking, kept saying his name again and again, hoping he was still beside her somewhere like he had been before the collapse. Praying that he was still alive. "Rob, are you there? Rob, _please_. If you're—"

"Beth?"

_Oh, Jesus. _Beth could've cried in relief at the sound of his voice; she was so happy he was still with her. His voice was weak and pained, she couldn't deny that, but at least he could speak. At least he could hear her. Her ears were still ringing from the bomb blasts and the collapse of the bridge on top of them, but she latched onto his voice and used it to orient herself and steady her crumbling world.

"I'm here," she called, her own voice bursting in excitement and relief before choking on dust once more and breaking into a coughing fit. "I'm here. I'm—" It sounded ludicrous to even say, because it wouldn't be true in an hour or two, but she said it anyway "—I'm alive."

"Me too." He whispered the words, like he was scared that if he said them too loud, the monster would hear, and come back to finish what he'd started when he'd killed Hud, Rob's best friend, right in front of them.

Beth lifted her eyes up suddenly superstitious too, but there was nothing to see but rubble. No sky. No planes. No monster destroying the city and everyone and everything in it. She couldn't see anything but darkness around her, pressing down on her, and she knew, in every cell of her body and every corner of her mind, that she was going to die here. There was no escape. No salvation.

Oddly, she didn't feel panic rise within her as she came to terms with that thought. She'd spent the last six-plus hours in a state of constant pain and unshakable hysteria. Full-on fight-or-flight mode. (She, and the rest, had chosen flight. The other option had meant instant death. …Instead of, Beth now realized, prolonged death.) She didn't know how long adrenaline usually lasted, but she felt like she'd been running on it for at least the past five hours solid. Now, she supposed, she had run out and was just coming down from that high.

The pain was worse now than she remembered it being these last few hours. Her shoulder throbbed like it housed a second heart, and when she focused too long on the pain, she could sense the empty hole in her shoulder where the rebar had cut through. She could actually _feel _it—that vacant space inside her, devoid of skin and muscle and tissue. She could remember how excruciating it had been when Rob and Hud and Lily and Marlena had wrenched her body from where it'd been impaled on that piece of steel in her apartment. How they hadn't been able to remove the rebar from her, and so they'd removed her from the rebar—lifting her entire body up and sliding it out of the clutches of the steel. She'd almost passed out after, the pain had been so horrible, so immediate, and so unavoidable.

Somehow, though, it felt worse now.

"Can—Can you move?" Rob asked, coughing through his words.

"No," Beth told him. She knew what his reply would be before he even said it.

"Me neither."

This was the part where she was supposed to say that it was okay. She was supposed to say, _That's all right that you can't move. Rescue's on its way, anyway. They have those bulldozers and those Jaws of Life; they'll get us out of here. Don't worry for a second. _But she didn't say any of it. She was tired of spouting lies to him.

"What do you think it was?" she asked instead. "That… thing?"

"I don't know, Beth," he muttered, suddenly sounding exhausted and annoyed at the mere mention. Sounding like this was the hundredth time she'd asked the question and not just the first. She was going to defend herself—what else was there to talk about, anyway? Like, _Come _on_, Rob, ease up_—but then she remembered, and she wanted to hit herself for being so thoughtless. So callous. For a minute, she'd forgotten all about Hud. She'd forgotten about everyone that they'd lost to the monster.

"Well, it doesn't matter, anyway," she said quickly. _Because we're about to die, _she might've added, but luckily, she caught herself this time. "I'm sure, years from now, everyone will know what it was."

"Yeah, and they'll know the easiest way we could've killed it, too," Rob added, his exhaustion morphing into anger as quickly as a match sparked into flame. She wanted to interrupt, to calm him, but he was too quick, too furious: "They'll look back at us and laugh. Ants scurrying at the feat of the beast, that's what we are. Brainless. Worthless. Pathetic. We can't save ourselves or even get out of our own way. So fucking _stupid_," he spat, and she heard a dull _thump _accompany the curse—no doubt him hitting or kicking a nearby hunk of cement. A trickle of rocks and gravel followed from the rubble above them, and Beth held her breath, scared that his assault on the pile of debris around them had shifted things. Scared that the little tiny world around them would collapse on top of them once more, this time for good. Scared that they'd die just a little sooner than expected.

But there was no resulting shift in the pile—no extra pain—and so she let her breath go. She let him cool down for a couple seconds before trying to talk to him. She knew him well enough to know that he'd calm down on his own—he just had to be given space.

"There's nothing else we could've done, Rob," she reminded him quietly after a half a minute. They'd tried the streets and they'd tried the subways and they'd even made it to the army checkpoint. They'd been in a helicopter and on their way out of the city, for Christ's sake, but the monster had beaten them even then, and knocked them to the ground in a pile of fiery wreckage. There was no escape. Maybe there never had been. Maybe they'd been stupid to even try.

"I should've gotten to you faster," Rob said. "That was one thing I could've done. One thing that was actually within my power—getting to you; helping you."

Beth closed her eyes. "Rob…" She tried to tell him to stop, to not do this, to not go there now, but he ignored her.

"I _should've,_" he maintained, as if it were an indisputable fact and she was a fool for trying to argue with him. "I should've tried harder, ran faster. I—"

"You came," she reminded him, raising her voice above his. For a second, he was silent. She could almost hear him hold his breath. "You came," she repeated, quieter this time, her voice almost blending in with the silence. "That's all that mattered to me. You were the only one that even thought to come."

"But…" She could hear his voice grow sharp and crack on the word. She could hear the regret tearing him apart, crushing him like the rocks above them. "If I'd gotten there sooner—"

"It still wouldn't have mattered, Rob," Beth interrupted sharply, adopting his earlier anger and annoyance for herself. "Maybe we wouldn't be stuck here, yeah, but we'd still be somewhere just as bad. We'd still be trapped in the city. We'd still be…" _dying, _she thought, but couldn't say—not aloud, not here. Not to him.

She fell silent then, instead, and he fell with her. For half a minute, there was no sound in their soon-to-be grave except their slow and labored breaths. And then Rob spoke. And he talked about the one thing they never talked about.

He talked about that one night they'd spent together, in her father's apartment that overlooked this very park. He talked about that one beautiful day that followed, where he took her to Coney Island and not only gave her a tour of the area, but also of a side of himself that she'd never seen before. He talked about the days and weeks that followed, when he had never called her or saw her again and when she had waited in silence, too scared to push him when he had so much else on his plate.

"Do you know how much I regret what I did to you?" Rob asked finally, his voice hoarse and shaking with what she knew had to be tears. "Beth, do you have any idea?"

"Rob…" Beth shut her eyes. She could feel her own tears gathering. She didn't have any idea what to say. She had prayed for this conversation for weeks; she had actually _written down _everything she wanted to yell at him, but now that it was finally happening, she had no idea what to say. And she didn't want to yell.

She realized now, much more calmly than she would have ever expected, that this was the last time she would ever speak to him. She opened her eyes. She wished she could see him—and he her—but they were separated by too much rock to even glimpse each other. She turned her head towards the sound of his voice nonetheless, and imagined him sitting next to her like he had been before the collapse.

"I regret what I did to you, too," she said.

"Ha!" He tried to laugh, but was immediately overtaken by wracking coughs. Her chest physically hurt as she listened to him fight for breath. Her entire body strained towards his, wishing she could help and make him feel better. Wishing she could at least hold him like he'd held her when she'd been hurt. "What," he finally wheezed, "do you have to regret?"

"Letting you go so easily," she answered at once. _Wasn't it obvious? _she wanted to ask. "I regret letting you just disappear from my life like you did, and I regret going along with your idea that we weren't friends any longer or that what we had that one night, that one day wasn't… wasn't the most important thing in the world to me."

She expected a quick response to that, but he said nothing. Ten seconds passed. Twenty. Thirty. She tried to wait but she couldn't.

"Rob," she called out, scared that she'd lost him for good now, "Rob, are you—"

"Here," he called back, and she was relieved not only to hear him speak, but to hear him speak a little more clearly than before. She drew in a shallow breath and, sure enough, it was easier to do this time. She didn't know how long they'd been out before they woke up, but perhaps it had been long enough that most of the dust had settled.

"Do you mean that?" Rob's voice was quiet, and for some reason, sounded closer than before. Beth knew she must be imagining it—her ears were still ringing, after all, and her head was still pounding, so she could be imagining anything—but she took refuge in the idea that he'd somehow moved closer to her. That maybe he was just a couple inches from her.

A couple inches separated by over a ton of immovable rock that was slowly crushing them, slowly suffocating them, slowly killing them.

She squeezed her eyes shut to regain control of herself. She forced her mind to work, to recall his question and to formulate an answer. "Yes," she finally managed. "I do mean it." And then, more softly: "You're the biggest regret of my life."

She knew what she sounded like: a sheltered, spoiled little rich girl, whose only problems in life were boys and how to best squander her endless inheritance. But she couldn't take it back. It was the truth: when she looked back at her twenty-eight years of life, he was what she regretted the most. He was the one thing in the world she would choose to do over, if given the chance.

She waited for the mocking about that to come, but he just whispered, "You're my biggest regret, too," and she knew at once that he understood. He wasn't teasing her. After all, he _knew _her, better than anyone else in the world. They'd been friends for years—he had even been her _best_ friend, once. And she liked to think that maybe he still was. Maybe that part of him still fit with that part of her. Maybe they could still be friends—just for the next couple hours or so, at least.

"If we could have another day like the one Coney Island," Rob asked suddenly, his voice no longer so somber, but lively, "where would you want to go? What would you want to do?"

Beth blinked, inadvertently letting out of a weak laugh. _Where did this come from?_ she wondered. His question was so strange and unexpected that for a minute, she didn't know what to say, or even what he was really talking about.

But then she put it together, and she smiled despite her pain and despite their situation. He was just playing a game with her, like the way they used to make up stories about people on the street.

_That guy's definitely cheating on his wife, _Rob would say, discretely nodding his head at a businessman walking by who was staring worriedly at his phone._ He's got a second family in Albany that he's trying to keep a secret, but he thinks his wife knows._

_No way, _Beth would reply, watching the man glance at a nearby building before crossing the street, _he's definitely a bank robber. Look at how he's checking out those security cameras. He's casing the joint._

_Yeah, to pay for his second family to keep quiet and to buy off his wife's trust, _Rob would say, inevitably getting the upper hand, but always making her smile as he did so.

Just like then, Beth knew Rob was just trying to lighten the mood, like usual. He was trying to take her mind off their imminent death, and all their wasted opportunities, and their stupid fights, and—oh, what the hell?—she could play along. Where was the harm in it? They were trapped. They might as well make the most of the little time they had here together.

"Do we have to stay in the city?" Beth asked, jumping onto the game as if it were a rescue craft. "Or can we go out of the city? And," she added, thinking harder now, her brain stimulated, "can it be more than one day, or are we sticking with—"

"_God._" Rob pretended to groan. "You always need all your parameters, don't you? Always have to make an itinerary. You know, take a note from me: spontaneity can be a good thing."

If Beth could've folded he arms and glared at him, she would have. As things stood, the most she could do was make her voice stern like a prissy private-school teacher from her youth and direct her words vaguely in his direction. "I will make no apologies for wanting to have a plan, Robert."

He laughed, managing to make her smile again for a couple seconds, before the coughing overtook him once more. "Let's… start with in the city," he finally said. His voice was rougher, more labored, and the sound of it made her smile disappear. She couldn't help but wonder how long he had. What did it mean for his chances if his cough was getting worse? "For just a day or two, let's stay in the city. Then we can move out of it."

"Okay…" she nodded along, pushing the dark thoughts away and focusing on the game. There was a place that immediately came to mind, but she didn't want to say it. She was certain if she had enough blood left in her body, her cheeks would pink as she said it aloud.

"Think of anything?" Rob asked after a few seconds.

Beth pressed her cracked lips together. "Don't make fun of me."

"Can't make any promises," Rob replied, more breezily than she would've expected for a dying man. "But spit it out anyway, will you?"

She took in a breath. "I'd… I'd like to go to the top of the Empire State Building."

"Oh, god…" Rob groaned in genuine disgust this time. "You're a damn tourist!"

"I am _not_," Beth shot back. "I just—" she sighed shortly. "I've never been, okay? And I would like to go. I think it would be nice," she added hopefully.

"There's nothing up there. I mean, you do know that, right? Yeah, it's a nice view, whatever, but for thirty bucks each? Come _on_."

"I think it would be _nice_," Beth repeated, an edge to her voice now.

"Fine," he muttered sourly, giving in. He knew that tone of voice of hers—the _Elizabeth McIntyre Gets Her Way _voice, he'd once dubbed it—and he knew there was no fighting, arguing, or escaping it. Once, early on after they'd met, she'd once heard him whisper to Hud, _She orders around us peasants with that voice, you know. Be careful to listen or she'll have you drawn and quartered for even looking at her wrong._ She'd been so embarrassed—sometimes, honestly, she forgot that they had different definitions of money—but then Rob had noticed her listening, caught her eye, and winked. It was one of the first times she'd ever met someone who wasn't resentful of the way she'd grown up, or the money she had. Rob barely blinked at it, and usually just made a joke of it, and that worked for her. No one ever made light about the money her family had, and it was both startling and refreshing to have him do so. And besides, sometimes her life really did feel like a joke. Especially now. _This _was how it was all going to end?

"Hey," Rob called, bringing her back to their present conversation, "if we do go up to the Empire State Building, do we at least get to make out at the top? Will you give me that much for my trouble?"

Beth laughed, both surprised and amused by his behavior. She wasn't sure what was making him so bold and carefree—the fact that they'd finally talked about what had happened, or the fact that they only had a few hours left to live?—but she took it anyway, no matter what it was a product of. She wished she'd gotten to know more of this side of him. It had been so long that she'd almost forgotten what it felt like when he flirted with her. She'd actually missed the way he made her stomach twist. It was a really, really good type of discomfort.

"Maybe we can do that," she finally said.

"That's a yes," Rob concluded, triumphant.

"It's a maybe," Beth countered firmly, but she was certain he could hear the smile in her voice, even through the rock. That was something she'd never be able to hide from him.

"Okay," he called. "What do you want to do on day two?"

"On day two… Hm…" She closed her eyes, pondering the idea. There were so many places she wanted to go with him, so many things she wanted to do with him, that it was hard to choose just one. She wished so badly that they could both just get up and walk away from all this, but of course that was impossible. In fact, when she tried to stretch her legs, she found she couldn't move them even an inch, couldn't even wiggle her toes—let alone stand up and walk away.

"I can't feel my feet," she murmured, opening her eyes as if that would lift the darkness and shed light on her problems. She stared down at the dark shapes before her eyes that she guessed were her legs; they were covered almost entirely by rock. All she could see was her thigh, where the rock had cut deeply into it. She stared at the boulder embedded in her leg, realized how close it was to touching the bone, and felt her body start to tremble.

How far from death was she? She couldn't be far, she knew. If she couldn't feel her legs, and she couldn't move her arms… _How long did it take to crush a person to death?_ she wondered, feeling her breath start to grow shallow again. How much more painful would it become before she was finally gone? Would she pass out first? Or would she stay conscious, aware of every second that the rock was slowly squeezing her own life out of her?

_Oh, God_… She started to hyperventilate at the thought. She'd never been good with pain. She led a pampered, sheltered life. The only pain she'd ever experienced was at field hockey matches in middle and high school. And those were just wooden sticks banging against her shins and girls' bodies ramming in to hers—not five tons of rock bearing down on her!

"Beth?" Rob called. "Did you think of someplace?"

"I can't feel my feet," she choked out, the words bursting from her broken body like a dying gasp. "I can't—can't feel my legs or my arms or—or anything. The rock is crushing me and I—I think it's going to cut off my leg. It's already in so deep, Rob, it might go through the whole thing any second and I—"

"It's going to be okay," he cut in quickly, and—absurdly—it was. He spoke so confidently, with not too much rush and not too much desperation, that she had to believe him. And what other choice did she have—where would panicking get her now? It would probably only kill her faster, and she wanted to live as long as possible. She wanted to have one last day with him, even if it was here. Even if it was the day they died.

"Beth," Rob called. His voice was insistent and loud, as if he had somehow sensed the turn in her thoughts and wanted to keep her from thinking and hearing them. "Beth, you're gonna be fine. Just keep talking. Don't ever stop. You hear me, Beth? _Keep. Talking_."

"O—Okay," she managed, not feeling anywhere close to being able to talk normally, but trying to fake it for him. "I guess… F—For the second day, I—I'd want to leave the city. I'd want to go somewhere else." Her breathing quickened again. "Anywhere else. Jesus, I'd fly to the other side of the word in a heartbeat just to get away from—"

"Beth," Rob interrupted calmly, "It's okay. There's nothing to get away from."

"Rob…" She shut her eyes, swallowing the curses she wanted to throw at him. The game wasn't working, didn't he see that? It didn't feel good anymore. She didn't want to just play it—she wanted to _live it_. She didn't want to be here, she didn't want to die here, she didn't want any goddamn part of this.

"Just think of a place you like," he advised her. His voice was soft like the counselors she'd seen in high school. "Just think of somewhere you go to relax. Come on," he coaxed when she didn't say anything. "Tell me about somewhere you like. Tell me how we'd get there, and what we'd do there. Just keep talking, Beth. It'll get easier."

She swallowed, forcing down the fear and the dust and focusing her mind on the only other option besides pain and fear: hope. It was false, but it was all she had left here in the darkness. She took a deep breath.

"For the second day," she began anew, working to keep her voice as level as possible for his sake, "we'd leave the city. You and me. We'd hire a car, and we'd head out towards my family's place in the Hamptons, and we'd—"

"Oooh," he teased, his voice low, sounding like a child's rendition of a ghost. Sounding like the punk she used to know so well. "The _Hamptons_." His voice was so full of mockery she was surprised he didn't choke on it. "We'd _hire a car _and we'd _go to the Hamptons_."

"Shut up," she shot back, and actually smiled. If she could move her arm and actually touch him, she would've hit him in the shoulder. "Don't judge."

"Okay, okay." She could picture him holding up his hands in surrender. She could see that tentative little smile turn up the sides of his mouth ever so slowly.

That was something she'd noticed, after they'd slept together—he became cautious with his smiles. He used to be quick with them. He used to throw them around like people in her family (and, admittedly, Beth herself) threw around money. But when she'd woken up that morning to find him lying next to her in bed, he hadn't dared to smile until she did so first. She had to admit that she liked his more timid smiles over the ones she'd known before. They weren't cocky or scornful anymore; they were anxious, but always kind. They were a part of him that he'd never allowed her to see before, and for that, they were just another reason why she'd grown to love him. She liked to think it was the real him he had showed her that night, and that morning that had followed, with the timid smiles and the nervous hands, and maybe it had been. She hadn't had enough time together with him to find out for certain.

"So…" Rob drew out the word, slowly returning her back to the present. He made his voice lofty and affected, like some old-world British duke or count—something, he had, no doubt, picked up from a bad movie. "What is it you McIntyres do in the Hamptons, _exactly_?"

Beth knew he was expecting some lavish answer, like: _We drink five-hundred-dollar bottles of champagne and dine on caviar and host foreign guests. _Or, _We play polo in the mornings, and go shopping for designer dresses in the afternoon._ Beth smiled to herself at the thought. Maybe _some _people in the Hamptons did that, but mostly she just…

"I lay on the beach," she admitted, and she smiled when she heard him laugh. "What can I say? I never claimed to be glamorous."

"You always appear that way, though, don't you?"

Beth swallowed the last of her laughter, not sure how to respond to that. She knew he wasn't toying with her anymore.

"You do," Rob continued, as if she'd said something to contest his words. "I mean, look at what you wore to my stupid little going-away party. That dress…" He whistled, and even though she was trapped under tons of rubble, even though she was dying, she felt her stomach ripple at his flattery. "Most people came in jeans and t-shirts. Most people didn't change from whatever they'd worn to work that day. But you…"

Beth closed her eyes, letting his voice wash over her. "It was the last time I was going to see you," she whispered, remembering how she'd spent nearly two hours before the party trying to pick out what to wear. She'd finally settled on the gold sequin dress, but only after twenty minutes of putting it on and taking it off again, never quite certain if it was good enough for him. Never quite certain if it was the way she wanted him to remember her after he flew off to Japan. "I wanted to look nice for your last night."

"You looked a lot more than nice, Beth."

"Well…" She wasn't sure what to say. "I'm glad you liked it," she finally settled on, her throat a little tighter than before.

He murmured agreeably, but didn't say anything else. She listened to him breathe—the sound was loud enough that she could hear it through the rock—and waited. But still, he didn't speak.

"Rob?" she ventured quietly after a minute. "Are you there?"

"Mm," he mumbled. "Here."

"Are…" She swallowed down the roughness in her voice, and cleared her throat. She wanted to sound healthy and strong for him, even if they both knew she was the complete opposite of both those things. "Are you doing okay?" she asked him.

Her heart lifted a little bit when she heard him chuckle. "I am doing _juuust_ fine, Bethy," he answered, but even his sarcasm wasn't biting. He voice was as soft as she'd ever heard it. He sounded calm, almost as if he were falling asleep.

The thought terrified her. She knew what it meant, to be calm at a time like this. She knew what it meant to want to fall asleep. She knew he must be close.

"You're not going to—to disappear on me, are you?" She tried to make it sound like a joke, but it only came out sounding desperate, and much too serious. She had never been too good at playing pretend.

"Not disappearing," he replied, his words slurring together so much that, for a moment, she wondered if he had somehow been drugged. "Just resting…"

"I want you to stay awake," she called to him, her voice loud and forceful. Demanding. _Give me what I want, peasant, _he would mock if he were himself."Rob, do you hear me? I want you to stay awake with me."

"I _am_ awake," he complained, and she shut her eyes in relief because he sounded annoyed. He couldn't be too far-gone if he was still able to get mad at her. "Tell me more about your sun-bathing at the Hamptons. I hope you do it buck naked," he added.

Beth shook her head, but she smiled because, for now, at least, he was awake. That was all that mattered. "I'm sorry to say, but I do not."

"Damn," he muttered. "I was really counting on that."

"Oh, were you?"

"Aw, yeah. Definitely. I've been dreaming of it since you started talking about the Hamptons ten minutes ago."

"Well, don't worry, you can see me naked on other occasions instead," she teased.

"Yeah…" Rob paused, his voice falling. "I really wish that were true, Beth."

Beth bit the corner of her lip—the biggest part of her mouth that wasn't bloodied—and tried to take back her words. "I'm sorry," she told him. "I was just trying to play along. I'm sorry I'm so bad at this. I didn't mean to—"

"It's okay," Rob interrupted. "I know you were trying to play along." He paused, and when he drew in a breath, she could hear it rattle within his lungs. She tried to keep her own breathing even. "But after a certain point, the game becomes useless, doesn't it? We're not going to do any the things we talked about. We're not going to get out of here. We're not going to live much longer or be together…" He sighed, and when he did so, she heard him grunt softly in pain. She wanted to tell him he could cry out, he could scream; she wanted to tell him he didn't have to hide his pain from her—but she couldn't speak. And she was having trouble breathing properly, too.

"I think it would be good if we just laid here for a bit," he murmured heavily. "It's—It's getting a bit hard to keep talking, and I think—" he coughed, and then groaned "—I think it would just be good if you and I laid here together in silence for a bit." His voice lost its agonized timbre for a moment as he whispered, "You know, like… like we did after."

Beth nodded, closing her eyes and letting the memory wash over her as a couple tears leaked out. She couldn't say no to his request even if she'd needed to.

It had been strange, honestly, when the two of them had come back from the brink together and opened their eyes to find one another naked beside them. Neither had known what to say after they'd come down from their highs and fallen back against the mattress together. There had been a lot of things _to_ say—a lot of things that needed to be discussed—but for some reason, no words had ever left either of their lips. They'd just turned towards one another, drawn to each other, and as she stared at him, Beth had felt the strangeness melt away. An odd sense of familiarity took its place—as if they'd done this before, though of course they hadn't. Maybe she'd just been confusing her dreams with reality. Their night together had felt like a dream, in fact, but she hadn't minded the feeling. She knew it was only that—a feeling—and that what she was doing with him was real. They hadn't needed words to validate it. They hadn't needed anything to validate it. They had just looked at each other and smiled and that was all either of them required to make it real. They'd spent the rest of the night in silence, lying side by side, touching each other lightly, brushing their hands against each other's skin and hair, their mouths meeting when they had something to say but couldn't find the words. Eventually, they'd fallen asleep together, arms and legs and sheets wrapped round them. It had been one of the most peaceful sleeps Beth had ever known.

"All right," she whispered now, pulling herself back to the present. "Let's just lay here, then. Just you and me."

She didn't know how long the silence stretched on. It could've been minutes or hours or days… She had no idea. Sometimes strange sounds invaded their silence—far-off bombs and the sound of metal twisting and breaking—but she didn't pay them much attention. She could feel herself slipping now, as she had that night with him, closer and closer into unconsciousness. Just as she hadn't then, she didn't want to fall asleep now. She wanted to stay awake with him, to stay near him, but, in the end, she had no choice but to succumb.

She had even less of an idea of how long she'd been asleep when she woke up. She guessed, however, that it was only minutes. She was having trouble with her breathing now, and she knew she couldn't have slept long without being able to breathe properly. And she also knew her respiratory problems meant that she couldn't have much time left.

"Rob?" she whispered, when she'd gathered enough strength and wherewithal to speak. She wanted to hear his voice one last time. Maybe he would tell her again that he loved her. "Rob, are you there?"

She listened, first for his voice, then for his breath. She listened and listened. She counted to ten, and then thirty, and then a hundred. She started over. She counted backwards.

She did everything she could think of; she stalled in every way possible, but eventually, she had to face it: there was no sound. There was nothing. All she could hear in the rubble was the sound of her own breathing and the distant booms of bombs and a faint, otherworldly screech that she knew had to be coming from the creature that had attacked the city. She hoped it was dying a very slow, very painful death.

Just like she was.

Just like Rob had.

Because he was dead now, she knew it. But she only knew it in part of her brain—that part that figures out complicated moral dilemmas and analyzes complex political issues—that part that struggles with long-term problems and is always coming back to the question and redefining the answer.

In the other part of her brain, where she lived only in the short-term, Rob was just taking a nap. He would be up soon, and a rescue team would come to save them, and they'd reminisce about this all in a couple weeks, as they lay in bed together late at night, after getting out of the hospital. They'd hold hands in the dark and they'd talk about that day they almost died. They'd talk about how they'd gotten through it because of each other; they'd talk about how they had survived _solely for the other._ And then they'd roll towards one another and they'd put their hands on one another, and they'd reminisce about other things. Happier things.

With some effort, Beth opened her eyes and looked to her right. She could see strange spots and figures dancing at the edges of her vision. She pretended one of them was Rob, and spoke to it like she would speak to him if he were still here.

_Just keep talking, _he had said. _Don't ever stop._

"After the Empire State Building and the Hamptons…" She had to pause to catch her breath. "After all that, I'd want us to spend some more days together. All the days together, actually. And I know you hate plans, but I think you'll like this plan. Each day, we'll wake up together and have breakfast together… And then we'll walk around or go to the movies or out shopping, and later we'll have lunch… And we'll come home, and have dinner… And when we're tired, we'll go to bed together, and then we'll wake up together the next day and do it all over again… We'll do whatever we want…"

She kept talking, talking and talking, even though she knew no one was listening. She had gotten good at the pretending game, and she played it for all it was worth. She laid everything out, every detail of the impossible life they would never have together. She planned out every moment and laid down all the rules, continuing the game and morphing it into her own private, elaborate, and entirely unbelievable fantasy. It was all she had left, and she clung to it with each of her dying breaths.

She wasn't sure when she stopped talking, but after a while, everything grew silent and still. It became too tiring to talk. Too tiring to breathe.

And eventually it became too tiring to even keep her eyes open. They blinked, and blinked again, and then her lids were too heavy to lift, and she didn't want to bother, anyway. It wasn't like there was anything to look at.

She'd gotten used to the pain by then. That wasn't to say it didn't hurt—her muscles burned like they were being lit on fire and both her head and shoulder pounded like elephants were stomping on them—but she also knew it was unavoidable. She had come to expect the pain and, somehow, she had learned to deal with it. That's what they always said death was about, anyway—acceptance.

Well, she'd accepted it. She hoped Rob had, too.

She felt a smile take shape on her face as she thought of him. Maybe, if she was lucky, she would see him soon. She could feel herself drifting now, and she didn't fight it this time. She let the rest of her body go slack, as it wanted to, but she kept a couple muscles working for herself, working to keep that smile on her face. She wanted it to be the first thing he saw when they met again. She hoped it wouldn't be too long now.

. . .

**Author's Note: **Thank you so much for reading! Comments would be greatly appreciated. :)


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